


You Are at the Top of My Lungs

by TheThirdTemptationOfParis



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, Language of Flowers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Requited Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 14:07:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18251390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirdTemptationOfParis/pseuds/TheThirdTemptationOfParis
Summary: "You are at the top of my lungs, drawn to the ones who never yawn."He coughed the first petal up after the pool.He stared at it in his hand. Small. Speckled. Lily of the Incas.Devotion.





	You Are at the Top of My Lungs

It started slowly. Just slight pangs in his chest whenever he looked at John. He thought it was just the reawakening of his sympathetic feelings that he had so long repressed. But the more he focused on the pain, it felt like spider web fissure cracks were forming in his lungs. He wasn’t far from the truth. 

He coughed the first petal up after the pool.

He stared at it in his hand. Small. Speckled. Lily of the Incas.

_Devotion._

His whole world stopped.

He had first heard of hanahaki disease when he was young. It was when he first started showing an interest in science. There was a documentary on television that he watched, and if he was honest, he was enamored. The documentary covered every basis. There was an archeological portion where they found some victims of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius with fossilized flowers where their lungs would have been. There was also a beat for beat comparison between the flowers that come from the disease and their wild counterparts. There were no differences.

Doctors, scientists, and philosophers have all agreed that the disease can be caused by unrequited love. However, they still had no clue as to why the flowers begin to grow. They have also speculated that in most cases, the flowers that grow within the host mimic the feelings that the host has by way of the language of flowers. Hence why Sherlock was now coughing up lily petals. He was hopelessly devoted to John, but over the last few months, that had become apparent.

Another coughing fit started up as Sherlock continued his research. This time, it’s not a small, speckled petal, but rather what looks to be a few small yellow buds of a larger flower. Acacia.

 _Secret love._

His world hadn’t just stopped. It had _shattered._ He loved John, but John didn’t love him back. 

This wasn’t going to end well. 

***

He was in front of Molly at the lab when the full flowers started. Lilies, full buds of acacia, all with small flecks of blood covering them, landed in front of him on the floor. He followed them, his knees hitting the linoleum.

Molly came to his side, most likely thinking he had collapsed from exhaustion or just ordinary sickness, but when she saw the flowers before him, she crouched beside him, a hand on his shoulder, “Oh, Sherlock…” she whispered.

He began coughing again, heaving over the small pile of flowers, sweat breaking across his forehead. Soon, the pile had grown, a mess of a bouquet. Macabre, yet beautiful. 

When he finished and all was quiet, he sat back on his heels and looked at Molly, “When you… with me… did you…?” He couldn’t get the sentence out. If he had put Molly through a similar thing, he would forever be guilty.

Molly shook her head, “No. I wasn’t in love with you, Sherlock. I was enamored, yes, but that’s not love.” She rubbed his shoulders again, a crease forming between her brows, “Sherlock…” she cleared her throat, “Is it John?”

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. He picked up a few of the flowers and looked at them, “Lilies. For devotion. Acacia. For… secret love. I love him, and he doesn’t love me back. And it _kills me,_ Molly. It will _kill_ me.”

He heard Molly take a deep breath before she spoke, “You could always --”

Sherlock cut her off, “No. Not an option. The surgery will get rid of my feelings for him and I would let this god forsaken disease kill me before I let that happen.”

She rubbed his back again, shushing him, “Sh, alright, I’m sorry.” She paused for a moment, then spoke again, “I’ve heard some theories going around by the few doctors who specialize in hanahaki here that sometimes someone can develop it just by thinking that their love is unrequited. That the object of their affections might also be afflicted.”

Sherlock shook his head, “All speculation, I’ve read about that too. And I have never heard John cough, much less cough like _this._ He doesn’t love me.”

Molly left it there, just rubbed his back for a few more minutes and helped him clean up the mess he’d made. If only there was a way to clean up the other mess that was growing around him. 

***

His next huge fit happened a few days later in front of John. It was a few months after the “death” of Irene Adler. He had been rambling like any other normal day, like any other case, when he felt it. It lodged itself in his throat, a lily this time. He’d been able to distinguish between the two. Then he’d started coughing, alerting John. He was by Sherlock’s side in a second, keeping him planted, not letting him run from the sitting room like he wanted to.

“Sherlock, Jesus, what’s wrong?” He clung to Sherlock’s shoulder, keeping him planted when he wanted to retreat, “Hey, whoa, no, stay here. What--”

The lily dropped into Sherlock’s lap. 

John’s hand left his shoulders.

He picked up the flower.

“Devotion,” John whispered. 

Sherlock flinched. He didn’t want John to make the right assumption, but another part of him prayed he would. That maybe Molly was right. That maybe, just maybe…

“Devoted to a dead woman. Jesus, Sherlock. It’s been months. This is progressing too fast. You need to consider--”

“No!” Sherlock shouted, standing, looking down at John, “I don’t want to forget, John. Don’t ask me to.”

John twirled the small bloom between his thumb and forefinger, just staring at it, “Alright.” He sounded defeated, “I won’t ask you to.”

John left it at that. But he didn’t notice that the flowers continued long after Irene came back to life.

***

He was on the roof, looking down at John. He could feel the flowers in his throat, but he spoke through them, around them, getting everything to John, except the words he most wanted to say. When he couldn’t speak around them anymore, he told John goodbye, and jumped. 

He coughed the flowers up as his place was made on the pavement, one of his homeless network looking at him with sympathy. 

As he laid on the pavement, looking up at a broken John, he felt an entire bouquet rise up his throat, but he did his best to stifle them and the coughs. His homeless network, dressed as medical personnel, lifted him from the ground and pushed him away. As the doors closed behind him, he heard John begin to cough. _Christ, no._

***

Mycroft came into the bathroom while he was cleaning himself up. The first thing he did was look into the sink at the flowers laying there, “Oh, Sherlock. Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell him?”

Sherlock slammed his hands on the sink, “Why does everyone keep asking me that? Because hanahaki arises from _unrequited love._ He doesn’t love me back, Mycroft! What good would it have done me?” 

“He would have known, just in case this journey proves fatal. And you could have gotten the-”

“The surgery to keep me focused on the task at hand, yes. But you don’t understand, Mycroft. _I don’t want to forget him._ If I have the surgery, there would be no point. I can survive this task, and I can survive the hanahaki. I can come back to him.”

“You can’t survive it. Not with this magnitude. Not with all the work that needs to be done.”

“Then what do you suggest, brother mine?”

Mycroft sighed, “There’s a theory among the experts that it can be slowed down. That a partial surgery can leave the host with the same feelings for the object of their affection, but diminish the amount of flowers.”

Sherlock looked to his brother, “How tested is this theory?”

“It hasn’t been tested yet. They have had no willing participants.”

Sherlock pondered on this for a moment, “What if it’s not true? What if I agree, they perform the surgery, and I wake with no feelings for John? What then?” Mycroft opened his mouth, but Sherlock didn’t let him answer, “I can tell you what then. I would have no motivation to dismantle Moriarty’s network. I will have nothing to come back to. _I will have nothing._ ” 

“You think you can survive his network and the disease long enough to come back?”

“I’ll have to.”

Mycroft nodded.

***

John Watson was still kneeling on the ground where Sherlock had fallen. The strangers had begun to disperse, and Lestrade was there. There were petals in front of John. Pink carnation and passion flower. Lestrade didn’t say a word, just hoisted him from his knees and ushered him back to 221B.

John stared at Sherlock’s empty chair.

Pink carnation. Passion flower.

_I will never forget you. Faith._

He shook his head. It was a sick joke, but it was true. 

He would never get the surgery.

***

Two years passed as slowly as possible. Sherlock’s wrists hung from the walls of the cell of Baron Maupertuis. A pile of flowers laid at his feet, decaying and rotting. The flowers had changed over his time away. Baby’s breath and clove.

 _Everlasting love. I have loved you and you have not known_. 

As if the overwhelming smell of decaying flowers wasn’t enough to punish Sherlock, the baron had sent as many men as he could to beat information out of him, but it hadn’t worked. He had all but given up. Either these men were going to kill him, or the flowers would.

Then he heard a familiar voice. Granted, it was speaking Serbian, but it was still Mycroft. He was here to get him out. Sherlock let the exhaustion and trust for his brother take over. 

***

When Sherlock woke up, he could tell he was back in London. When he took a breath, his lungs felt fuller, and his first thought was that Mycroft went behind his back and made his get the surgery without his consent, but when he thought of John… he felt them. The flowers. And the longer he thought of John, the more he felt the urge to cough.

“Just cough, Sherlock, you’ll feel better,” Mycroft said from the corner of the room. So Sherlock did.

Mycroft crossed the room as it got worse and hundreds and hundreds of tiny flowers spilled from his mouth. He sat down beside Sherlock and rubbed his back, just like he used to when Sherlock was younger, “You know the sooner you tell him, the sooner this can all go away, right?”

“But that won’t change anything. I know what you’re doing, Mycroft. Once I tell John and get rejected, you’ll finally be able to convince me to get the surgery and then all my problems will go away, back to it was before I met John.”

Mycroft sighed through his nose and shook his head, “No, that’s not what I mean at all. While you’ve been gone, they’ve confirmed that people can contract hanahaki just by thinking their feelings are unrequited.”

Sherlock rolled back over to look at Mycroft fully, “What?”

“And there’s other news. When I was keeping an eye on John, he too had hanahaki. Scientists have termed this hanahaki dualis. That is, if the feelings are between the same two people.”

Sherlock bolted upright, wavering for a moment, “You said… you said when you _were_ keeping an eye on him. You haven’t been?”

“No. He moved out of 221B last year. And he specifically asked me not to anymore.”

“So you don’t know if he’s gotten the surgery? Where is he going to be tonight?”

When Mycroft didn’t answer, Sherlock raised an eyebrow. Mycroft sighed, “He has a reservation in the Marylebone Road. The Landmark.”

“I’m going.”

***

That night. Seeing John again. It was so much for Sherlock. And the woman that was with him. Mary. A girlfriend. And John was angry. Reasonably so. When John tackled him to the floor of the Landmark, Sherlock felt the stitches on his back splitting. And when John left him standing on the street, Sherlock coughed, just to clear his throat, and a few blossoms of clove landed in his palm. He crushed them and dropped them on the ground as he walked away.

***

Sherlock was on his best behavior for the longest time. Being kind, but not too kind, to both John and Mary. Because John was marrying her. And Sherlock was helping them plan the wedding. 

John is out of the room the first time he coughed up flowers in front of Mary. She looked at him in shock and horror as the flowers fell into his hand. With her being a nurse, she came to his aid, and when she connected the meaning of the flowers her face fell, “Oh, Sherlock. Who is it?”

“Someone long gone,” he whispered. He took the flowers to the open window and threw up the screen, dropping the blooms to the street below. When Sherlock looked up in the glass pane above him, though, he saw the disdain on Mary’s turned away face. She knew.

***

The stag night was a disaster. _The stag night was everything._ Sherlock forwent the plan by the time they had gotten home from their pub crawl. They were drinking scotch and playing some inane game, but John was smiling and warm and home. 

When John slid off the chair and placed a hand on Sherlock’s knee, it seemed as if all the oxygen was sucked out of the room, “I don’t mind,” he said, shrugging.

“Anytime,” Sherlock whispered back.

A strange look crossed John’s face as he looked up, “Really?”

Sherlock said nothing. 

“Sherlock, do you…” John clears his throat, “do you still have it?”

The cloud of drunkenness dissipated from Sherlock’s mind as John’s question registered. Sherlock did what he did best when it came to John. He protected him. He lied, “No, John. I don’t have it anymore.”

That strange look crossed John’s face again as he leaned even closer. Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat as John’s lips brushed his own. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut as John whispered against his lips, “I never thought I would see you again. My flowers are for you, Sherlock. They always would have been for you.”

Sherlock stayed silent again, hoping to any god that was listening that John was drunk enough to not remember this in the morning.

“I had suspicions that your flowers were for me. But I know you, Sherlock. If they were for me, you would’ve never gotten rid of them.” John’s hand curled around the side of Sherlock’s face, fingertips running through his curls.

Sherlock felt blossoms rising in his throat but he did his best to keep them down. He can’t let them out, not after lying to John.

John leaned back, a small, sad smile on his face, “I don’t want to get rid of my flowers, Sherlock. I’d rather let this disease kill me. Or…”

John didn’t finish his sentence, not just from not wanting to, but because he had fallen asleep. Sherlock swallowed, closed his eyes, and sat back. He coughed quietly into his hand, letting the small blooms fall into the cup of his hands. He looked at them, and his heart seized in his chest. He looked to John and whispered, “I don’t want to get rid of my flowers either, John. Never.”

***

As the days inched closer to the wedding, John noticed that his flowers had begun to change. Almond blossoms. Queen Anne’s Lace. 

_Indiscretion. Fantasy._

He barely remembered anything from the stag night, but if he had to guess, he had done something a bit untoward, and the fantasy portion was infiltrating his mind. He wanted Sherlock. But he was too far into the biggest mistake of his life. _Shit._

***

It was the day of the wedding. Sherlock had been walking around him as if there were eggshells surrounding them. And John seemed to be doing the same. Neither of them knew what to do around each other on today of all days. 

Sherlock opened his mouth more times than he could count to say something. What, he didn’t know, but if he could hazard a guess, it would have been something to stop John in his tracks, to make his remember what he said the other night, but thought better of it. John’s flowers were for him, and Sherlock had lied to him and said he had gotten rid of his own flowers. He could have changed their fate at any moment, but he chose not to.

As he watched John dance with his new wife, his new, _pregnant_ wife from his place on the stage, he could feel Molly’s eyes on him. She knew. She could see that every part of this was draining him. But Sherlock kept up a good front. He smiled at John, threw his boutonniere to Janine, and left the wedding early after telling John and Mary the news. 

If he would’ve known that it wouldn’t have killed him, he would’ve went in search of the needle that very same night.

***

John was livid. He had found Sherlock in a drug den surrounded by people who should have been long behind him. And he was high. Molly had confirmed it. And if she hadn’t been the one to smack him, John would have done it himself. How dare he go and throw away his life? How dare he?

And then the rest of the day went on. 

There was Janine, and the proposal, and Magnussen, and Sherlock was dying. 

Sherlock was dying under his hands.

When the paramedics arrived and they got to the hospital, one of the doctors tried to tell him he couldn’t follow after him. John gave the man a stern look and used his captain voice to say that wherever Sherlock went, John followed. The man didn’t argue after that.

The surgery took hours. John watched from the side of the operating room, not trusting his hands to do this important task.

One of the doctors turned to him a few hours into the surgery and said, “Sir, were you aware that Mr. Holmes has hanahaki disease? It’s fairly far along, like he had contracted it several years ago.”

John’s hand came up to cover his mouth, which was also covered by a surgical mask. He felt his own blossoms rising up his throat and he suppressed them as best he could.

“Sir, would you like us to perform that surgery as well? If this bullet doesn’t kill him, the disease will.”

John shook his head as a million thoughts flew through his mind. _He still has it. He’s had it for years. He’s still alive. He didn’t get the surgery. They’re for me. They’re for me. They’re for me._

He couldn’t suppress his own blooms anymore. He fled the operating room and coughed up the flowers in the corridor. Several other patrons of the hospital looked on in sympathy, but no one stopped to comfort him.

He was brought the news that Sherlock had flat lined, but revived moments later. 

That simple fact made John’s mind up.

***

Sherlock woke up, drowsy and uncoordinated, but he could feel someone’s hand in his. The hand was small, the palm was rough, and he knew that hand. He’d held that hand before. It was John’s hand. He gripped it lightly, his strength growing with every passing second. When he opened his eyes, John was looking right at him.

When Sherlock’s wakefulness registered with John, John leaned forward, his hands, those perfect hands, coming up to curve around Sherlock’s face. And John kissed him. And he _kept_ kissing him. 

Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat.

When John pulled back, he looked directly in Sherlock’s eyes, searching.

“Say it,” Sherlock whispered, “Say it, John.”

And John did.

“I love you. I love you, Sherlock. I love you so much.”

As John spoke, Sherlock could feel the flowers withering in his chest and felt something new blooming. Hope. Happiness. Love. 

Sherlock held John still as he tried to dive back in to kiss Sherlock again, “I love you, John. I always have. I always will. I love you.”

John laughed, “We a pair of idiots, aren’t we?”

Sherlock hummed, “Indeed we are. But we made it.” John pressed his forehead to Sherlock’s collarbone, and Sherlock ran a hand through his hair, “We made it.”


End file.
